Devs mention ranger PvE buffs

What do you feel is currently the biggest issue with class balance in PvE?

Jonathan: There are a few things. It differs by content slightly. One of the big things in dungeons right now is that obviously people know that warriors and guardians are really good. We know that rangers are sometimes seen as very weak because of the liability that is the pet so right now we’re actually working on a lot of stuff to bring the ranger up and to get on the same page to be able to compete with the other guys who are taken very often into the dungeons. We’re also looking at all the different classes to make sure that they all have a role that they can fill. This goes back to some of the earlier questions. If you’ve got eight classes and five slots, somebody’s going to get picked more often than others. That’s something we want to make sure that we don’t take away some of the power that all the classes have and that they enjoy those top spots, but we want to give everyone a chance to be in there. We want to make sure that that ranger is getting a lot of help to pets and spirits and utilities. We want to get them back up there. Thieves as well.

Thieves as well? I hope this is only for pve and not pvp because thieves are the last thing that needs a buff.

Most thieves don’t make it out of the lower tiers because you can mitigate them very easily. As a ranger I shut thieves down all the time who don’t use venoms, especially if you have something like healing spring and Lightning reflexes. One fixes stun, one fixes immob/cripple, and then it’s just dodge rolls at the right moment and CC to shut them down. Also bring wolf for f2 and stay nearby when thieves start doing their stealthy bit, and then be ready to watch them flee in terror.
That of course means their build options are highly limited, and when that happens people can hard counter you more easily.

The changes for rangers coming in this next patch are a step in the right direction for them. I am not part of that team so I won’t be announcing any of the changes unless told otherwise.

And again, you’re talking about 1v1 situation.
When you’re already fighting against someone, last thing you want is getting bursted for 10k in 1sec and then evading heartseeker…
And it’s PvE buff, which most of us don’t really care about. I think on PvE ranger is on decent position, while on PvP it’s hitting bottom line in almost ever possible thing. It should be the matter looked about and improved.

I don’t intend for this to be the decline of optimism, but JP said virtually the same exact thing half a year ago… So it’s a contradicting feeling of being happy we’re not forgotten, but not believing anything will be resolved.

And again, you’re talking about 1v1 situation.
When you’re already fighting against someone, last thing you want is getting bursted for 10k in 1sec and then evading heartseeker…
And it’s PvE buff, which most of us don’t really care about. I think on PvE ranger is on decent position, while on PvP it’s hitting bottom line in almost ever possible thing. It should be the matter looked about and improved.

Rangers “hitting bottom”? Have you ever played against a GS ranger who can use his utilities and evades properly? You must be one of those people who just stand at one point and try to snipe people from a far and then get suprised from behind.

Well played ranger can cause (mildly expressed) HAVOC when he keeps crippling, chilling, bleeding, poisoning and evading while not moving from the point at all. Their AOE is bad. That I admit but they are non the less an excellent 1vX class.

Thieves as well? I hope this is only for pve and not pvp because thieves are the last thing that needs a buff.

Most thieves don’t make it out of the lower tiers because you can mitigate them very easily. As a ranger I shut thieves down all the time who don’t use venoms, especially if you have something like healing spring and Lightning reflexes. One fixes stun, one fixes immob/cripple, and then it’s just dodge rolls at the right moment and CC to shut them down. Also bring wolf for f2 and stay nearby when thieves start doing their stealthy bit, and then be ready to watch them flee in terror.
That of course means their build options are highly limited, and when that happens people can hard counter you more easily.

The changes for rangers coming in this next patch are a step in the right direction for them. I am not part of that team so I won’t be announcing any of the changes unless told otherwise.

Wonder if they’re general system changes (like general pet AI…aka things that could affect minions too, for example, since some don’t associate those as pets) or Ranger specific changes…

You got me wrong @Hicci.
Last months I spent basicly only on ranger (so do first months, but back then i was completly nooby). I regeared him and learnt to play the proper way. I’m not one of those guys claiming ranger is weak, they can’t kill anyone or thief is taking them down in less than a second on versus.
While ranger is pretty decent played the good way (and for sure pretty strong on 1vs1 due many evades) he has nothing to be in ‘’dream team’’ of eg. 5 people. Survivability isn’t at it’s highest (comparing to other classes), damage is on ‘’meh level’‘, and very poor group support. That’s what I meant, that certain things should be improved.

I am also excited especially with the trait line revamping that they mentioned. I’ve been getting flustered with my ranger trying to figure out how to balance my pet and my own dps with the weapons I use SB/LB.

Either I max out the amount of damage I can do and make my pet paper, or I beef up my pet and lower what I can do noticeably (piercing arrows/20% skill reduction/Eagle Eye/etc). I’d really like to make my pet an extension of myself without killing my own contribution to a team…what little I do already besides some decent CC skills <3 Muddy Terrain.

Thieves as well? I hope this is only for pve and not pvp because thieves are the last thing that needs a buff.

You probably haven’t done much tPvP. Thieves are not all that valuable there. They are mostly good in sPvP against people who are learning new classes.

As for dungeons, thieves definitely need a buff. They are currently the weakest class in that area.

How so? They have high DPS and with mass stealth allow for running groups to get through parts easily. They also have stealth fields to mitigate dmg and apply blind. Idk I’ve just never run into problems with my thief in dungeons, or at least I didn’t notice much…it’s probably just me

But I’m still skeptical. I still remember spirits’ health being halved on a whim (instead of removing the double health trait – thus now requiring a trait to get the same amount of health as the previous untraited version) and spirits receiving an internal cooldown on top of it. Back then I already didn’t care to use spirits because of having to manually recast them every minute and requiring a 30 point trait to make them mobile. I also remember the long wait for our shouts, only to have the old ones return.

So no, I’m going to have to wait and see. Words mean very little right now and these problems were created by their own accord a long time ago and didn’t receive any attention since.

When asked, "Are you happy with each class’s ability to avoid damage, and do you take a class’s ability to pull aggro into consideration when working on methods of damage negation? Are there any classes that you feel need more or less work in this respect? “The classes overall are pretty okay”

Want to know which classes that made the list that need more or less work?
Only the Elitis classes; guardians, warriors. Elementists, and Theif.

So this is where the Future of the game is heading to, all in favor for the Elictist classes.

No where mentioned of Ranger classes in need of anything; how disregarding and insulting. .

I am not Surprised at all that the lesser classes are not in need of anything..

I had Protested countless time that this game is in Favor. for the Elitist classes and I’m glad they finally confirmed this. I’m also glad and relieved many of those who are or were ranger players, no longer Delusional or in Denial of the truth.

Robert Hrouda statements about “The changes for rangers coming in this next patch are a step in the right direction for them. I am not part of that team so I won’t be announcing any of the changes unless told otherwise”
is clearly the opposite to what Jonathan and Jon stated.

You got me wrong @Hicci.
Last months I spent basicly only on ranger (so do first months, but back then i was completly nooby). I regeared him and learnt to play the proper way. I’m not one of those guys claiming ranger is weak, they can’t kill anyone or thief is taking them down in less than a second on versus.
While ranger is pretty decent played the good way (and for sure pretty strong on 1vs1 due many evades) he has nothing to be in ‘’dream team’’ of eg. 5 people. Survivability isn’t at it’s highest (comparing to other classes), damage is on ‘’meh level’‘, and very poor group support. That’s what I meant, that certain things should be improved.

I’m sorry but have you ever seen a BM or trap ranger playing properly? They can do amazing stuff and actually people are constantly complaining about how strong they are.

You got me wrong @Hicci.
Last months I spent basicly only on ranger (so do first months, but back then i was completly nooby). I regeared him and learnt to play the proper way. I’m not one of those guys claiming ranger is weak, they can’t kill anyone or thief is taking them down in less than a second on versus.
While ranger is pretty decent played the good way (and for sure pretty strong on 1vs1 due many evades) he has nothing to be in ‘’dream team’’ of eg. 5 people. Survivability isn’t at it’s highest (comparing to other classes), damage is on ‘’meh level’‘, and very poor group support. That’s what I meant, that certain things should be improved.

I’m sorry but have you ever seen a BM or trap ranger playing properly? They can do amazing stuff and actually people are constantly complaining about how strong they are.

Still nowhere close to:
Guardian’s/Ele’s group support
Guardian’s (warrior and ele too) tankyness
Mesmers/Thieves burst
All written about survivability
Mesmers/Engis condition burst (mostly confusion dealing over 400 per stack)

They are half decent in many matters which doesn’t make them good in any.

Once again. I’m not saying rangers are the weakest. I’m saying rangers don’t have anything to be known for.
You can do it yourself and compare every matter to those written above and compare ranger to other classes as being beneficial in group.

As for topic: These are things we heard before (about changes). I’m kind of disappointed that they think ranger doesn’t have bigger issues, but well… Time will show.

To use an appropriate meme in an inappropriate context: “pics or it didn’t happen.” Words are words. They were words then, they are words now.

Hrouda said “something” is changing in the right direction. But the last thing the ranger community as a whole is going to respond well to is more babysteps. This could very possibly be another aquaman update, but we don’t know, because nobody ever discusses anything with the playerbase.

The last Guru state of the game; while talking about important game changes, somehow the quickness nerf wasn’t even hinted at. Even if it wasn’t in its final phases, it had to have been close to ready and discussed numerous times. Withholding that type of game changing information only enrages the community.

So again; “pics or it didn’t happen.” To be as polite as possible, I don’t trust a single thing that comes out of a balance devs mouth or is posted on the forum(this obviously doesn’t apply to Hrouda because he is not a balance dev).

Thieves as well? I hope this is only for pve and not pvp because thieves are the last thing that needs a buff.

Most thieves don’t make it out of the lower tiers because you can mitigate them very easily. As a ranger I shut thieves down all the time who don’t use venoms, especially if you have something like healing spring and Lightning reflexes. One fixes stun, one fixes immob/cripple, and then it’s just dodge rolls at the right moment and CC to shut them down. Also bring wolf for f2 and stay nearby when thieves start doing their stealthy bit, and then be ready to watch them flee in terror.
That of course means their build options are highly limited, and when that happens people can hard counter you more easily.

The changes for rangers coming in this next patch are a step in the right direction for them. I am not part of that team so I won’t be announcing any of the changes unless told otherwise.

On a more serious note, I thought the following quote by Jon P was quite revealing in that he actually opens up about how the community contributes to what ANET can and can’t do with the game.

Jon: One of the biggest issues with balance in PvE is that is skill cap. We see there are certain things that, as soon as we try and balance for a certain thing, we can’t change… One thing we could do, we could just make creatures do more stuff and more difficult stuff, and what would happen is… So I think one of the things is that the warrior and guardian are pretty straightforward professions. And creatures tend to be more straightforward for players to fight, so warrior and guardian tools are are straightforward tools that work well toward these more straightforward creatures. We could just make our creatures less straightforward, and that would actually kind of solve some of these problems, but it would create a new problem for players that are not good at dealing with these less straightforward situations. We would have a lot harder time balancing our encounters if we made our creatures that way. There’s kind of this fine line that we have to walk of encounters need to be understandable to a large variety of players, but at the same time in understandable encounters are probably more straightforward for classes with more straightforward tools to deal with those encounters and are generally going to be more effective in those areas. There’s work we can do and what we are doing on both ends to solve this, but that’s just one of the biggest issues. It was an issue before and it’s an issue now, it’s kind of the issue that got us to the point we’re at now and why we have that problem.

I applaud him for opening up like that and strongly encourage you guys to give it a read. What’s he talking about? Well, the sonic towers of course. Do you have any idea how many people on both reddit and these forums whines about how hard those simple devices are to destroy? Or what about the supposed OP guild bounty bosses? I remember a day when a boss was so hard (Punch out final boss for example) you just gave up and accepted that you lost that day. Those were the good old days, man.

TL;DR
Balance may be attained without simply increasing damage yet part of the problem is ranger is geared towards a crowd control / condition damage playstyle but as soon as they put those elements in PvE, people struggle and get upset. Therefore, the only answer is to split skills, leaving crowd control and tight team coordination in the realm of PvP. PvE’ers want to see big crits yo, not burning or blast finish might stacking. That said, they did acknowledge a few underwhelming traits and skills and mentioned fixing them.

Thieves as well? I hope this is only for pve and not pvp because thieves are the last thing that needs a buff.

Most thieves don’t make it out of the lower tiers because you can mitigate them very easily. As a ranger I shut thieves down all the time who don’t use venoms, especially if you have something like healing spring and Lightning reflexes. One fixes stun, one fixes immob/cripple, and then it’s just dodge rolls at the right moment and CC to shut them down. Also bring wolf for f2 and stay nearby when thieves start doing their stealthy bit, and then be ready to watch them flee in terror.
That of course means their build options are highly limited, and when that happens people can hard counter you more easily.

The changes for rangers coming in this next patch are a step in the right direction for them. I am not part of that team so I won’t be announcing any of the changes unless told otherwise.

awesome!

rangers must be getting a major melee damage and burst upgrade that is equivalent to those potent skimisher thieves! that would make rangers extremely balanced and provide more build options while still keeping us easily mitigated!

i’m so happy i could cry! i love you like a brother robert! you are the best! thank you! i will spend some money on gems soon just for you!

Yeah, dude, I was just busting your chopps about the song, jk. I don’t have the energy to defend this profession anymore. I have fun with it and that’s all that matters to me. That post is very interesting though, def. give it a read when you get a chance.

I hope the changes in the next patch are robust pet changes. As much as I’d love to see spirits and general support options get the buffs they deserve, the pet is the thing I have with me regardless of what build I choose so making it perform better would be an across the board improvement for the class. Having said that, if they returning the crossfire to its former glory I wouldn’t complain. It felt good to shoot that quickly.

I’m sure there are people who’d disagree with me on the desire for a change, but I’d personally like to see the sword root design removed. The cost of the leap (or having to mimic a grenade engineer with auto-attack) isn’t worth the benefit, at least not in PvE. Making it easier to position yourself with a sword might increase the number of melee rangers in PvE and increase the perception of class DPS without making any substantial number changes to the DPS the class is already able to do (aside from more rangers being alive to do it). As a user of the sword in PvP I can understand the strength of it as a strong melee weapon that really helps you keep on your target and why they might not want to let that go very easily.

Remember to keep your expectations low with their ranger changes. We’ve been on this roller coaster before.

How do you feel about the fact that groups for high level fractals or specific dungeons are starting to look for specific classes when forming parties. Is this something that you find troublesome, and if so what do you think can be done to change this moving forward?

Jonathan: I think this goes right into what Jon was talking about. You basically have these classes that you have this perception that they’re just better at doing that job than anybody else. I think as long as you have that perception in place, players are going to say, “this is what works, I know it, this is what I saw on the forums, let’s just run that.”

Jon: One thing, though, that we have been trying out recently – this just triggered, I wasn’t going to say it for sure, but you know, streaming – if you look at games that have a lot of really good streaming with their playerbase, that perception can be changed even without changing the balance sometimes. Where you see, like, games that are popular and have popular streamers, tend to have that understanding and [help it] filter down to the average populace. So part of it, like we said, is perception and trying to mitigate that and one of the ways to do that is streaming. Part of it is not perception, part of it is just, for instance like we’ve said – you’re talking about high level fractals or dungeons – there definitely are professions that feel like they fill those roles a little bit more, and certainly, if nothing else, they fill them more easily. It may be the case that you can be just as good as being a support guy with an engineer, but it’s definitely not as easy to do as with a guardian. That path of least resistance tends to also drag people in that direction. I think it still holds to some extent, at least for me when I’m forming PvP groups, I find that 99% of the time I’d rather choose the person that is good at running their profession and build than the person that is just running the build that people say is good. That has always been the goal. I don’t think it’s hard to completely overcome the perception that, you know, guardians are blue and they have blue bubbles and that makes people think they’re the best supporters. Literally sometimes it’s just stuff like that. We’re probably never going to completely overcome that perception, even if we make guardians the worst support class in the game. I think there needs to be the sense that, even if we can’t succeed at doing the perception thing, we still should still be able to succeed in the fact that if you are good as an engineer at doing support, that people who understand how that works will still bring you because they will understand the value of player skill over the value of copying builds.

It appears they believe that a large part of the problem isn’t actually performance, it’s perception. I have no idea how they plan to boost streaming, this seems like a player driven thing, maybe we will see an ArenaNet team with Robert running high level fractals on his ranger. Bonus points if he uses a sword and torch.

Ranger could really use some WvW large scale fights utility as well, one suggestion I has was shorten the cooldown on entangle and make it an aoe targetable skill. Ranger typically doesn’t want to be on the front line so it would be nice to be able to use it at range.

Pretty much shelved my ranger pretty much since the class is not all that wanted outside of an extra SAB toon and random DEs where no one can complain anyway. While I’m not sure exactly what they are planning to do, I’m not quite sure what they can do with pets that wouldn’t make them somewhat overpowered even in PvE but here’s to hoping. I’m halfway expecting any PVE ranger build to require 30 marks in BM to be semi-effective though I guess some people might say that’s the current situation anyway.

Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of the pet entirely and get a straight up stat boost and the devs already mentioned that they weren’t looking into this. I still somewhat disagree with this.

In GW1, pets were limited to the ranger secondary/class as well but at least you weren’t handicapped if you decided not to use one. In fact, the only time I remember pets getting serious use was with RAO and IWAY. The latter required your pets to be dead and the former was either gimmicky or PvE (with AB skills) so I’m not too sure why people mention rangers and pets all the time in relation to GW as opposed to splinter/barrage (the horror) or cripshot/BA/magebane.

Man, I miss cripshot. Yes, I realize that GW2’s ranger shortbow tries really hard to mimic the versatility and it’s arguably our best weapon. It’s still much weaker in comparison.

….wait, did I figure it out? Are we getting IWAY? That would be hilarious.

I for one am optimistic. Again I point to the fact that in the interview they are openly talking about trying to balance different realms of gameplay differently. They also openly talk about certain classes that might excel in some gameplay modes and not others.

If they begin to balance skills differently for different aspects of the game, you might see utilities work radically differently then they do now in different settings. For instance this opens the possibility that traps could be set instantly in wvw, instead of waiting for someone to trip them. You might also see spike trap pulse dmg in the same way as vipers nest or flame trap. This would make rangers instantly better in zerg combat.

I doubt this is a change that we would actually see, but if the devs are actually starting to look at performance of classes in different settings, and deciding to nerf or buff their performance in said setting, it certainly opens a lot of possibilities.

I am also optimistic for the next patches because of the wholesale nerf to quickness. Quickening Zephyr was one utility we had access to that instantly increased our dmg output. Pair that with quickness on pet swap every 16 sec and we had a fair amount of bursting capability. Weapons like the shortbow have really suffered from the quickness nerf. I think the quickness nerf has also highlighted shortcomings in other utility or weapon skills.

When Anet has millions of players logging, and whatever number of those players using their ranger they get to see a little more what people might run instead of quickness, if anything, and what to buff to bring the class back up.

I also like that they brought up the issue of perception. Ever heard the saying perception is reality? I have found rangers actually quite capable of dishing dmg in dungeons. Not as good as a warrior, but certainly quite good. Rangers are even capable of burst dmg, though if you read these forums the general consensus seems to be steady dmg output. The way traits are set up now for this class however, and the utilities at our disposal mean that a ranger has to invest a lot, work quite hard at it, and even then still push a ton of keys to make it all happen.

Anyways, I have been drinking a little, and this post is rambling.

If you haven’t read the interview with the devs, take the time to do so. And when you do I recommend you don’t comb through looking for every mention of the ranger class. There are a lot of issues and mechanics that are much broader which are talked about in a very informative manner.

Whether you main a ranger or not the future of the game does seem exciting.

Sounds perfect to me. Honestly, the only area I believe Rangers can’t compete it’s PVE Dungeons. They may take more skill then other classes in PvP or WvW but people do it all the time. In open world PVE we flat out own. The one area that almost everyone agrees we lack in is PVE Dungeons.

I love my Ranger, he’s my main and I play him 90% of the time I’m on, but when it comes time for Dungeon Runs I always switch to my Guardian not because I want to, but because I have to. If they follow through on this and give me something I can bring to the table in Dungeons, I’ll be one happy camper.

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those that understand Binary, and those who don’t.

I applaud him for opening up like that and strongly encourage you guys to give it a read. What’s he talking about? Well, the sonic towers of course. Do you have any idea how many people on both reddit and these forums whines about how hard those simple devices are to destroy? Or what about the supposed OP guild bounty bosses? I remember a day when a boss was so hard (Punch out final boss for example) you just gave up and accepted that you lost that day. Those were the good old days, man.

TL;DR
Balance may be attained without simply increasing damage yet part of the problem is ranger is geared towards a crowd control / condition damage playstyle but as soon as they put those elements in PvE, people struggle and get upset. Therefore, the only answer is to split skills, leaving crowd control and tight team coordination in the realm of PvP. PvE’ers want to see big crits yo, not burning or blast finish might stacking. That said, they did acknowledge a few underwhelming traits and skills and mentioned fixing them.

One of the interesting things about rangers and some of the underutilised classes is that PvE design is in some ways stacked against them. What do I mean by this? Take Defiant. It absords CC skills, so does stability. These two mechanics are used liberally in PvE, particularly for group content. I can understand why (boss encounters would turn into ping pong without them) but the power level of a stun in PvP and the power level of a stun in PvE are dramatically different because of defiant. Weapons and classes which are built around these kinds of mechanics (and balanced to accommodate them) are simply underpowered in PvE (because their overall effectiveness is balanced to accomodate how powerful they are in PvP). In PvP a stun is powerful enough to work every time (provided it hits and the opponent doesn’t have stability). In PvE a stun is far less powerful – defiant means the vast majority of stuns won’t do anything and weapons and builds which utilise them become far less efficient in PvE than a weapon which hasn’t had it’s power level adjusted for these mechanics.

Compare that with blocks and reflects. Blocks and reflects are equally effective in PvE and PvP. There is no PvE mechanic which makes them less useful, they will still work on every applicable attack whether it be a simple arrow or the Imbued Shaman’s agony fireball (and skills like Wall of Reflection will block all ranged attacks for their duration). I can use Aegis to prevent my entire part from being knocked down by the flame effigy in CoF path one or to prevent them from being pulled by Kholer in AC. Because there is no mitigation mechanic for blocks (like Defiant does for CC), they are actually more rewarding and valuable in PvE. You can’t block every attack but when a lot of bosses can be essentially reduced to two or three powerful attacks, the ability to negate one or two of them with a single skill is incredibly powerful. You can’t reliably do that with a stun because of defiant.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a serious rethink on the defiant mechanic and value added to the way interupts work in PvE (Defiant is also directly counter to the idea that the devs want us playing the game and not the UI – you spend more time watching the UI for defiant stacks than you do watching the boss model for visual cues on important skills to CC).

Add to this the number of mechanics in dungeons which involve damaging objects which conditions don’t work on (the final “boss” for CoF path two, the Snowblind Fractal, the burrows in AC, the gate lock in CoF path one etc) and the fact that despite recognising it as a problem early on (I recall devs commenting on the condition damage issue within the first three months) no solution has been implemented, there are a lot of issues with game design which don’t match up with PvP.

I don’t think your periscope example is a good one (that favours the ranger anyway) because I find it easier to destroy them on a warrior. I have to dodge on either character (that’s the only difficult mechanic of it) but the warrior does more damage to it and thus destroys it faster. I think defiant is one of the mechanics which removes complexity from the game. I’m not saying I want bosses as vulnerable to CC as players are, but defiant is the wrong way to go and the value and strategy of using your stun at the right time is thrown out the window as a result. In GW1 interupts were very strong but rarely required, in GW2 interrupts are almost completely ineffective except in highly co-ordinated teams.

I hate to say it rangers but they have said this numerous times in the past hell even in the beta and nothing was done about the ranger problems. I hope they really do it this time, though I wouldn’t get ur hopes up guys.

Im not saying rangers need a dmg/survivability buff when it comes to the actual player but the pets need some added survivability or some kind of extra mitigation maybe something like reduced aoe dmg taken by 75% ect idk though im not a game dev. I hope they do something though so I can actually use a pet besides 2 bears for dungeons/wvw